Software

Who still uses Wordperfect?

Dave Farquhar Software , , , , ,
Who still uses Wordperfect?

I had an odd question come up the other day: Who still uses Wordperfect? It’s a fair question. Wordperfect, as you may know, is still very much in production. Corel releases new versions every year or two. It’s the #2 word processor in the market, still. Someone is still using it, then.

Wordperfect is a software classic, especially the old version 5.1 that ran under DOS. For a time, Wordperfect 5.1 was one of the two most famous programs for IBM compatible PCs. The other was Lotus 1-2-3.

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Why is Publisher hyphenating my words?

Dave Farquhar Office, Software , ,

Why is Publisher hyphenating my words? That’s probably one of the most common questions I hear about Microsoft Publisher. There’s a good reason for it, but I understand if you want to disable it. So I’ll answer both questions.

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Find capitalized words in Libreoffice or Openoffice

Dave Farquhar Software ,

Sometimes you need a way to find capitalized words in Libreoffice or Openoffice. This can make it easier to figure out if the word needed to be capitalized, in the case of a poorly written or edited document. Then you can make a decision whether the capitalization was appropriate.

Another time you would need to find capitalized words in Openoffice or Libreoffice would be when you’re creating an index. I’m sure there are others.

It’s easier than it sounds.
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Speed up Firefox

Dave Farquhar Software , , , , ,

I’ve seen a lot of gimmicky hacks to speed up Firefox, and you probably have too. But chances are Firefox ran just fine when you started, then it slowed down over time. Here’s my collection of tips to restore Firefox’s performance if Firefox is slow.

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Fix Chrome running slowly and lots of aw snap errors

Dave Farquhar Software ,
Fix Chrome running slowly and lots of aw snap errors

I had a big problem with Chrome running slowly and lots of aw snap errors. It took me a while to fix it, but I’ll share my secret with you. It sounds weird but I promise it helps.

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Chrome says your file may have been moved or deleted – fixed

Dave Farquhar Software
Chrome says your file may have been moved or deleted – fixed

When opening locally stored PDFs in Chrome, sometimes Chrome says the file may have been moved or deleted. More specifically, the error message says “Your file was not found. It may have been moved or deleted. ERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND.” But nobody moved or deleted the file, because I just clicked on it. In fact, I could still see it sitting right there in Windows Explorer.

Oddly enough, I had other files, even files of the same type, in the very same folder that opened fine. No errors. Here’s how I found the problem, fixed it, and avoided it in the future.

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Find words in all caps in Word

Dave Farquhar Office, Software ,
Find words in all caps in Word

Sometimes it’s helpful to be able to find words in all caps in Word. Microsoft Word, that is. This helps you find all the acronyms so you can make sure you spelled them out or explained them properly.

Double-checking acronyms is especially important when writing government proposals, which require you to spell out acronyms on first usage. If you’ve never written a proposal, be glad, smile, and nod. Many acronyms make good index material, so this trick helps when you’re writing an index. Also, acronyms are frequently jargon, so making sure you explain them adequately is just part of good writing. Or, if you’re a fan of high quality typography, you might want to find them all so you can set them in small caps for improved aesthetics and readability.

Here’s how you do it.

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Get rid of trailing zeroes in Excel charts

Dave Farquhar Office, Software ,

I was making a chart in an Excel spreadsheet the other week and it insisted on adding trailing zeroes in the charts after the decimal point, even though all of my stats were whole numbers. Here’s the solution I finally found to get rid of trailing zeroes in Excel charts.

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Dual screen Citrix, or dual monitor Citrix

Dave Farquhar Software , ,
Dual screen Citrix, or dual monitor Citrix

At my current and immediately previous job, we made heavy use of Citrix. Citrix makes remote access and administration really convenient. But you don’t get dual screen Citrix by default, and that’s a shame.

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How to justify text in Publisher 2013

Dave Farquhar Office, Software , ,

I couldn’t figure out how to justify text in Publisher 2013, but I finally found the way. Here’s how.

I did some layout in Publisher 2013 after having not done page layout in a decade or more, and Publisher 2013’s interface confused me a bit. I finally found two ways to justify text.

The fast, easy way: Highlight the paragraph you want and press CTRL-J. Done. I love keyboard shortcuts. Justify starts with “j,” so that makes the keyboard shortcut pretty easy to remember.

The harder, slower way: In the paragraph tab, click the down arrow in the lower right corner. In the “Indents and Spacing” tab, there’s a dropdown box called “Alignment.” Select “Justified,” then click “OK.” Scout’s honor, I looked past that option at least 17 times.

Oddly enough, once I used full justification, then I got a little icon in the paragraph section of the ribbon for that, but I’m 100% certain that option wasn’t there before.

Pro tip: If you’re going to justify text, make sure you enable hyphenation. Click inside the text box, then click “Format” under “Text Box Tools” under the ribbon. Justified text looks much better when hyphenation is on. Hyphens reduce the number of spaces the computer has to insert. Fewer spaces mean fewer “rivers” in the text, and that makes for a better-looking page. Here’s more on hyphenation if you’re curious.